Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Day 3, Saturday 23/06/2012, Olary Creek to Mt Ive Station


True to form, Olary Creek was a freezing  -2°C last night! Everything had a white coating of ice and poor Jamie was crying with aching, frozen fingers while having brekkie.  Finally I had a decent sleep last night. The first one for 3 nights. Thank goodness I’m on the mend!  It was lovely to enjoy a walk along the creek bed at sunrise with Fiona and the kids.

 

After stopping at Oodla Wirra to throw out our vegetable scraps at the quarantine station, we stopped at Peterborough for morning tea. It is a lovely old railway town from the 19th century. The kids had fun playing on the old steam engine, the women photographing old buildings. I managed to update my blog, and received a text message off Leah about her photo not winning, but voted popular choice! Well done Leah.

Jordan is now driving us into the Flinders Ranges. We left earlier than the others as her speed limit is lower.

We took our third photo of Jordan and Jack at the Flinders Ranges lookout. The first one being 10 years ago and one 2 years ago.


We had to go grocery shopping at Port Augusta, especially for fruit and vegetables. The park in the town square made a great place to have some lunch while the kids, large and small let loose in the playground.


Fiona and I found some Sturt Desert Peas to practice photographing. Unfortunately we didn’t get away from here until 3pm, making for a late arrival at Mt. Ive Station.
Woohoo, nothing but sightseeing tomorrow, 4WDing and great scenery!


It was a fast 80km/hr drive along the dirt road to the station. It’s an extremely well maintained dirt road. The biggest challenge was avoiding the plethora of animals at dusk. Sheep, goats, kangaroos, emus and a fox. The Gawler Ranges were bathed in an orange glow from the sunset.

There was only one other person in the campsite, in a caravan, but several Asian students were staying in the shearers quarters.
It cost us around $140 for 2 nights plus all sightseeing. It gets you mud maps of the 4WDing and a key to the gate for Lake Gairdner.
We set up around a beautiful group gazebo with light, table, chairs and BBQ. We enjoyed hot showers from the “donkey” heater and found out Peter’s battery was dead again!
Bruce and Col did a bit of a check, and all we can say is “Great Job boys from Tamworth”.  The correct sized cable sudden stopped short and went to ¼ size and wasn’t even soldered, only taped.



A repair job coming on in Ceduna.  How handy to have jumper leads and an electrician on board.

1 comment:

Leoni Freeman said...

Hi Cheryl, this is the first chance I have had to read your blog and it sounds like a great trip so far. I am very envious of your adventurous spirit.

Keep up the blog when you can, its great to see what you are all doing.

I loved the comment about Lisa getting changed on the wrong side of the car - hilarious I can just see her face when she realised.

Take care and keep safe. Most importantly have fun.